It is a problem in wireless communication networks that the network topology is exclusively point-to-point, or one-to-one, in nature. This paradigm represents the historical view of wireless communications as a non-wired equivalent of traditional wire-line telephone communication networks which serve to interconnect a calling party with a called party. An additional problem in wireless communication networks is that the need to concurrently serve many voice subscribers with the limited bandwidth available in wireless communication networks has prevented the provision of wide bandwidth communication services, such as broadband data, to these subscribers.
The third generation (3G) wireless communication systems represent a step toward solving the above-noted problems. The third generation wireless communication systems support the provision of advanced packet data services. When the wireless subscriber device is away from its home wireless network (roaming), a special data communications link (Wireless IP tunnel) is established between the visited wireless network and the home wireless network. In this case, IP packets directed to the wireless subscriber device's IP address of the home wireless network are routed to the home wireless network, and a Wireless IP tunnel redirects the IP packets to the visited wireless network where the roaming wireless subscriber device is located and being served.
However, even with advances in bandwidth utilization and the provision of packet data services, wireless communication networks still operate on a point-to-point paradigm, with the networks being unable to concurrently communicate data to a plurality of subscribers, which is the fundamental concept of broadcast communications, especially in the case of a dynamically changing audience for the broadcasts. As a result, wireless data networks are inherently inefficient in terms of spectrum and asset utilization when delivering broadcast-like information to subscribers.
An alternative to the point-to-point paradigm is the multicast, which constitutes multi-media content that is concurrently delivered in a single transmission to a plurality of subscribers who are equipped with wireless subscriber devices. A feature of multicast is that multiple subscribers share a single air interface channel, which extends from the radio transmitter to their wireless subscriber device and comprises the forward path that carries the multicast, to concurrently receive the multi-media content on the same channel.
The present multicast environment presents a problem with respect to the provision of transaction management since a plurality of subscribers is concurrently sharing the same forward path to receive the multi-media content. There is no ability for a subscriber to initiate and effect a transaction without the subscriber originating a separate point-to-point communication connection from the subscriber wireless device to the point-of-sale or point-of-information server, making the process burdensome to the subscriber and disjunct from the advertising or other stimulus that caused the subscriber to initiate this transaction.
New wireless multi-media content delivery architectures, such as MediaFLO (“Media ForwardLinkOnly”) and DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld), solve some of the present limitations of multi-media content delivery by using a broadcast architecture to produce a pseudo-multicast delivery and concurrently disseminate the multi-media content to a plurality of wireless subscriber devices. In these architectures (also termed “multicast” herein), a unidirectional multi-media wireless broadcast network transmits multi-media content to selected authorized wireless subscriber devices in a time concurrent fashion, independent of the cellular communication network that is operational in the same coverage area. The wireless subscriber devices used in these broadcast architectures contain a multi-media content broadcast receiver which does not have the capability to communicate in a “reverse path” direction over the broadcast network. That is, the MediaFLO and DVB-H multi-media content broadcast receivers are incapable of transmitting anything, much less processing a “transaction”. In the case of MediaFLO, for example, the wireless subscriber device is often a dual mode device which contains both a forward-path-only MediaFLO broadcast receiver for receiving the broadcasted multi-media content (television) as well as a conventional CDMA or GSM cell phone for cellular telephone calls. However, there is no “connectivity” between these essentially two disparate devices housed within a single wireless subscriber device, and the two networks with which they interact are operationally independent. The MediaFLO broadcast receiver cannot communicate with the imbedded cell phone, and the imbedded cell phone cannot communicate with the MediaFLO device during the receipt of the multi-media content.
The MediaFLO and DVB-H multi-media wireless delivery architectures, therefore, are static in their user interface, since there is no interactivity between delivered multi-media content and the subscriber. The processing of a transaction in this environment requires the initiation of a separate point-to-point communication connection from the subscriber wireless device to a point-of-sale or point-of-information server to initiate and effect a transaction, making the process burdensome to the subscriber and disjunct from the advertising or other stimulus that caused the subscriber to initiate this transaction, since there is no coordination between the two activities.
Thus, the state of the art does not enable a Transaction Communication Capability (on the reverse path of the cellular communication network or via some other means) that links received multi-media content with an associated subscriber initiated transaction.